The company I work at is fairly small and the IT department consists of 2 people, myself and my boss. Until recently there were no restrictions on user machines and no organized way for users to request help. We just impletemented an IT service request database where people can input their problems, suggest a date for completion, etc. This is a step in the right direction but the biggest problem we are facing right now is getting people to use the database. They think why should they have to fill out a form about their problem when they can just come to my office and tell me about it. We also just recently changed everyone's user accounts to just that, users. All these changes are going to be very beneficial in the long run but it's hard to change people's habits to adapt to these changes. I know alot of big companies probably use the same sort of strategies but I wonder if they are too much for small companies, perhaps at smaller companies a different approach is required?

Addressing the rift between sys admins and users, nothing ticks me off more then when I go to someone's computer to fix a problem and they accuse me of causing it in the first place. I just started back at my job last week , it's a summer thing, and I go to help someone and the first thing he said was "Now I know you were on my computer and this wasn't here before, and I would like it changed back". I was polite and told him I hadn't touched his computer yet and the response was "well someone was on here". I'm not rude to my co-workers, I don't accuse them of doing their jobs wrong or question them, so why can't they show me the same respect? My question is, how do you deal with people like that without being rude or condescending?

Ah the life of a sys admin ;)